The invention relates to on-board radar for mini unmanned air vehicles and more specifically to position-adaptive on-board radar for mini unmanned air vehicles in urban environments.
Low-altitude “robotic” mini unmanned air vehicle technology has important applications for emerging and future threat scenarios in hard urban environments where, for example, “objects of interest” may be concealed between buildings. Other challenging environments and scenarios include surveillance and interrogation of regions-of-interest that may be embedded within mountainous terrain.
The current state-of-the-art for sensors on mini-UAV helicopter platforms are generally video cameras. While video technologies for remote sensing and surveillance have many useful applications, they are not useful for embedded or obscured objects. The present invention is a low-cost lightweight radar system that allows for information gathering for special applications such as in embedded environments (i.e. inside buildings), detection and characterization of hidden and obscured targets (i.e. between buildings), as well as potential for detection and pre-characterization of very small and slow-moving man-made and biological threats that, to date, have not been detected with currently available prior-art sensor technologies.